At the beginning of 2025, after Donald Trump was elected president for the second time, I couldn’t figure out what kind of show to make. I wanted to make a show that would meet the moment, because everybody was having a moment of one kind or another. In fact, we’re all still having a moment. On the one hand we have things like laundry and parent teacher conferences. On the other hand we have drought and floods and wildfires and political insanity.
What does that sound like?
This series is my attempt to answer that question. I asked listeners to send me recordings from wherever they were, about whatever they wanted, and I made a series called "What Now Sounds Like." My hope is that when you listen to all these recordings together, they start to make something that sounds familiar to you, something that is more than the sum of their parts. This is the second episode. It’s called Whales Wrestling and Customer Service.
This show includes recordings from Blake in New York City, James in Sussex, England, the Niagara Frontier Radio reading service, River in Portland, Oregon, Alice in Fletcher, Virginia, Naomi in Middlebury, Vermont, Howard in Woodstock, Vermont, bells and markets from Melanie in Merida, Mexico, and James at a wrestling even in London.
Rumble Strip is a podcast produced by Erica Heilman and distributed on the radio by Vermont Public. Learn more about the show here.
